Spanierman v. Hughes, ___F. Supp. 2d___ (D. Conn. Sept. 16, 2008), is an important Education Law as well as First Amendment case. A federal lower court held that a probationary teacher failed to show his constitutional rights were violated when his school
did not renew his teaching contract after it received complaints of
inappropriate contact with students via his MySpace page.

Interestingly the court found that the teacher was acting as a private citizen, but the adverse action being 5.5 months after the posting in question was too remote in time to establish a casual connection. Additionally, as the court stated the school was able to demonstrate that it would have taken the action in question anyway:

Moreover, even if the Plaintiff had established this causalconnection, the Defendants could still prevail by demonstratingby a preponderance of the evidence that they would have takenthe same adverse action in the absence of the protected speech,or that the Plaintiff’s speech was likely to disrupt schoolactivities, and the likely disruption was sufficient to outweighthe First Amendment value of plaintiff’s speech. See Mandell,316 F.3d at 382-83. In the court’s view, the Defendants wouldhave taken the same adverse action absent the existence of thepoem on the Plaintiff’s MySpace page. All the evidenceindicates that the action taken against the Plaintiff resultedfrom his interactions with Emmett O’Brien students. There is noindication that the poem in any way played a part in thedecision to not renew the Plaintiff’s employment contract.In addition, the Defendants have submitted evidencesupporting the argument that the Plaintiff’s conduct on MySpace,as a whole, was disruptive to school activities.

This decision is very lengthly (41 pages) and full of cites. A variety of other constitutional claims such as Equal Protection and Due Process were considered and rejected by the court. Researchers and lawyers may want to take a look at this case.